In order for routers to remain relevant in the wireless home networks of the future, what features/special tricks should they do to empower the user and make the home network better? I have friends who still hack routers to unleash new possibilities...but really who wants to keep doing this? Isn't technology supposed to make life easier?!

Advertisement

Advertisement

It's not a matter of making life easier, it's a matter of providing hardware a home user can afford. You can't stuff 3TB of firmware into 8MB of RAM, and you can't sell a router with 3TB of RAM for $20. People don't buy good, they buy cheap (which is why some pure unadulterated crap is still being sold). If you want good, and hackable, grab all the WRT54GSs you can (if you can still find any).

Not everyone needs a graphic representation of traffic, or repeater mode, or cares whether the web interface is blue or red. You buy the router that has the functions you need.

Besides, even if everyone came out with routers with all the firmware anyone would ever want, someone would think up another function and hack his router to do it. It's not possible to create a router (or any other hackable appliance) that some hacker isn't going to hack.

You want ease of use? The router lets you connect more than one computing device to a single internet connection. What could be easier than taking it out of the box, plugging it into power and an internet connection and forgetting it? 99% of router users have no need to do anything else. Many times, if you find that life is complicated, it's because you want more out of it than the average lump of protoplasm does.

In order for routers to remain relevant in the wireless home networks of the future, what features/special tricks should they do to empower the user and make the home network better? I have friends who still hack routers to unleash new possibilities...but really who wants to keep doing this? Isn't technology supposed to make life easier?!

Generally if you've got people who install custom firmware onto routers to configure SNR and stuff like that such as Tomato firmwire or DD-WRT they're generally going to want to do it whether or not it's a remarkable sucess.

As the previous poster says, you get what you buy. Whether it's a cheap Belkin or TP-Link piece of excrement or a $400 cisco router.

I'd put myself in the category that im willing to pay a bit more to get a good bit of kit. I find the problem these days is separating the poor equipment from the good - and then - do i need the really good one for my purposes? I'm yet to find a really good review site that covers all of this - im sure its there somewhere. I could see home routers becoming defunct in the future. There will be a way of adapting the phone line with a new type of socket that performs all the same features - easy!

Dimpu, a router is wired. Some (many) routers have wireless access points built in, but that's not the router or the switch part. You're buying a box that has a router, a usually-6-port switch [one for the WAP, one for the router] and a WAP. The fact that they all come in the same box doesn't make a router a WAP.

But, unless we go to IPv8, or something larger than IPv6, we're going to need routers. Just add up all the computers in offices that sit behind a single router (mine has about 100 on a single external IP address and we're a very small company) and you'll realize that without routers even IPv6 isn't enough - for now, and computers haven't nearly saturated the world market. Fifty years from now there will be far more computers than there are IPv6 ( or even IPv8 ) addresses.

I want simple. Routers now a days have way too many useless options that many users don't understand in the first place. All I want is to be able to turn on/off wireless, change it's name and pass. Be able to disable internal DNS (so my computer can have external IP instead of internal) and a physical restart button (not just reset), not just the one in the admin panel. That's it.

I want simple. Routers now a days have way too many useless options that many users don't understand in the first place. All I want is to be able to turn on/off wireless, change it's name and pass. Be able to disable internal DNS (so my computer can have external IP instead of internal) and a physical restart button (not just reset), not just the one in the admin panel. That's it.

Some people prefer to make the most of their routers, I couldn't imagine not having QoS, or not being able to adjust SNR.

Would be interesting to see a router that can be switched between simple and advanced mode. Like some control panels. I rarely have more than one computer hooked up through the router so most of the time I just want to go right through and use my computer's settings to tweak everything.

Anything will do in reality, as long as it has at least one port and wireless capability. However, personally I would recommend a half-decent router such as the Billion 7800n which offers excellent security capabilities, advanced QoS and SNR tweaking, as well as standard stuff, such as setting up VPN, Port-forwarding etc.

agmgroup, almost any router will work. If you;re not going to be tweaking SNR, (or if you don't know what it means), you don't need that capability. The main consideration is quality. A $20 "wireless router" will usually fail quickly. A good router, if you keep it cool (heat destroys them) will last for many years. (I just junked a 10 year old one that was in a non-ventilated closet. And that's why it failed.)

I stick with Linksys, but d-Link is good too. Billion is a great router - but at 2-3 times the price.

BTW, I'm on a VPN at the moment, using a Linksys WRT54GS. They've been discontinued for a while, but they were in the $50 range. QoS, port forwarding? Any decent router does them. (SNR? Why would the average user care? If the signal is too weak, and you can't stay connected, you call your provider and complain.)

The D-Links I got in Thailand have got built-in lightning protectors. I used to sell a lot of new routers after a heavy thunderstorm. After I started selling those D-Links, I had no more fresh orders after thunderstorms. Good for the customer but not good for the shop.

That's the provider's fault. Where I am, the cable comes to a gas-discharge block before it enters the house. (And the drip loop is 5 turns, which adds to the protection.) I can lose my connection, but unless the cable gets a direct hit, I don't lose equipment. (Nothing made by man can protect against a 1GV, 300KA strike.)

BTW, I'm on a VPN at the moment, using a Linksys WRT54GS. They've been discontinued for a while, but they were in the $50 range. QoS, port forwarding? Any decent router does them. (SNR? Why would the average user care? If the signal is too weak, and you can't stay connected, you call your provider and complain.)

I guess I am quite alone on this forum in getting my moneys worth out of my internet connection. QoS is definitely needed on a shared-network if people game, P2P or such, and British infrastructure means I have to tweak SNR to get a half-decent connection without going with a bad company on fake fibre.

That's why I pay more for my connection, Dan. Excellent tech support (by local people who actually know how a network works), solid signal (never has anything but solid signal except for one time - when their power backup finally failed after hurricane Gloria (they stayed up longer than I did), I lost the signal. Oh - that was about 6 days without power).

Every environment is different. In the US, if you don't get good signal, and you're knowledgeable, you leave your provider. Verizon, the local phone company (they're nationwide) is about the largest, but I wouldn't take their service for free.

So I never have to worry about SNR. But QoS? Any decent router will handle it. I have my wife on max and me on min at home. She games, I download. And the VoIP modem doesn't need that much bandwidth.

I think a successful router in the future would be one that would be cheap, because who doesn't like cheap? Easy to setup, if they are not, then anyone afraid of anything with wires or that blinks (which is alot of people) will not have access to the internet. But besides that, theres not really anything a router needs that it dos't have already

"Cheap" is nice. "Easy to set up" is nice. "Works" is even better, and $20 wireless routers don't. But $50 wireless routers are relatively cheap and they're easy to set up. (You plug it into the wall, plug the internet connection into it and ... oh, that's it.)